


A Little Bit Surprising

by Jairissa



Category: Secret Circle - L. J. Smith
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jairissa/pseuds/Jairissa
Summary: Diana had no fated future, but she could learn to live with a life that has more than a few surprises.
Relationships: Diana Meade/Nick Armstrong
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A Little Bit Surprising

**Author's Note:**

  * For [followsrabbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/followsrabbit/gifts).



There was pain, of course. But Diana had been preparing for the pain for so many months that she'd been prepared for it, in a sick kind of way. It had been beaten down; tempered by love, and terror, and so many different types of joy that it was muted, somehow. Less stabbing, aching, all consuming, and more a dull ache that she could ignore as long as she had anything to distract her.

Life, right now, obliged her; it was ridiculously distracting. 

They had, all of them, been so busy - unsure they would survive Black John that they hadn't considered what would happen after. In the long term, that would be...well, life, Diana supposed. In the short term, it meant - and she didn't know how she had forgotten it - the celebration of the Winter Solstice. Not traditionally the coven's favourite holiday, it nonetheless held a special place in Diana's own heart. 

The winter cold, hidden away inside with her family, her coven, and... 

Well, better not to think about that. And it was easy not to, when she thought about what she had to do, what she _could_ do, with school still cancelled, a complete coven, and what felt like unlimited resources. There was money, of course. Her father's Christmas bonus had come in, and like most years he gave her free rein of it, his one yearly attempt to assuage his hidden, but always simmering, guilt. 

Now, at least, she knew why. 

Then there was the Master Tools. She'd yet to wear them herself. They spent most of their time hidden away, or clasped around Cassie's tiny limbs, so small that Diana sometimes wondered how she carried the weight of them. But Diana knew, deep in her bones, that all she had to do was glance in the younger girl's direction, and Cassie would hand them over without a thought. It was on the tip of her tongue so often to ask, but something held her back. In a way, she thought it was a relief to have the responsibility off her shoulders, without the fear that it would come to rest on some that would wear it too easily. 

Like she could breathe again, the first true, deep breath since her early teens. It was almost beautiful. 

There was room now, to think about darker things, yes, but also to think about happier ones. If she had her way, which Diana almost always did, she would prefer to think about the happier ones. Leave Faye to worry about darkness. Diana wanted, if only for a while, to focus on joy. 

The Winter Solstice was perfect. December 21 this year, only two short weeks away. Diana would make it perfect, if it...well, not killed her, she had come too close to that. Exhausted her to the point of distraction, she supposed, which was the point anyway. 

She had so many plans, so many beautiful thoughts, that she knew she would have trouble implementing them herself. She couldn't ask the coven, busy as they were catching up with the lives that had slowly faded to grey around them in their hyper focus. There were so many things that everyone wanted to do, that Diana couldn't bear to pull their attention away from it. 

Well, all but one. There was another member of her small family that could use a distraction too. 

*** 

"No," Nick said. Nick so often said that, to everyone, about everything, that Diana had been more than prepared for it. She tilted her head as she considered him, closed and guarded, but not cold. The icy heart that Cassie had melted inside him had yet to freeze back up. Diana hoped it never would again. She'd always seen, always known, that inside him was a solid, warm core, even if it was hidden under layers of loneliness and abandonment. 

"I can't lift the tree myself," Diana reasoned with him. 

"We don't celebrate Christmas," Nick countered. "You don't need a tree." 

"It's a Yule tree," Diana said, deadpan. 

"We don't celebrate Yule, either." 

Which was true, of course, neither of those holidays were part of the coven's traditional celebrations. Cassie did - or had - celebrated Christmas, though, and this was her first year away from the life she had given up to stay with them. Diana didn't want to add another sacrifice to the list that had already been endured, by all of them. There had been more than enough. 

She didn't tell Nick. She would never use Cassie against him like that. 

"I'm sure you can move the tree," Nick said, pivoting his argument. 

"I'm not quite that talented," Diana said, finally giving in to her laughter. "Levitation is not in my bag of magic tricks." 

"I bet it is," Nick sighed, but he had started to smile too. "If you really tried." 

Diana, as thanks, did really try. It turned out that, with enough concentration, she could summon a wind strong enough to levitate a Christmas tree, at least briefly. Nick, his face alight with a wonder she hadn't seen in him since infancy, held his hand out to touch the tree as it hovered above the ground, branches waving dangerously in the cross breeze. 

Taking his hand, Diana took a deep, chilled breath, and opened her mind as much as she could, trying to will the knowledge into Nick. Slowly, so slowly, the wind was taken out of her control, into his, and then theirs. It was a moment of connection that Diana had feared she would never feel again, with anyone. 

The downside to it was, of course, that two people exerting the same energy on the same task, meant the effect was a little more...profound than had originally been expected. 

"No," Nick said, glaring at her. 

"I'll lift the tree myself," she said, holding out the axe they had used to cut down the original tree. Nick took it without words. 

To thank him, Diana brushed as many of the pine needles off him as she could and took his sap-stained clothes to clean herself. 

*** 

Diana bought the decorations herself. She wouldn't dare ask Nick for help with that, and she couldn't ask the rest of the coven. That would ruin the surprise for Cassie; Nick was the only one that Cassie was, entirely unintentionally, avoiding. 

So, she took a road trip into Salem proper, murmuring something about school supplies for when school actually opened again. It was believable enough; Diana had always been a dedicated enough student that it would make sense to those not expecting her to lie that they would believe her without question. 

Well, except for Faye. Faye had always had a way of seeing so far into her soul that it may as well not have belonged to Diana at all. So when Faye was waiting for her beside her car, keys waving from her freshly red fingernails and a smirk on her mouth, Diana didn't fight. She just held out her hands until Faye handed back her keys and climbed into the driver's seat. 

They were silent for the first half of the drive, Diana's eyes on the road and Faye's on the leafless, lifeless trees that had so recently been glowing with a fire that rivalled Faye's own. 

"We don't celebrate Christmas," Faye said, more quietly than most people would ever have heard from her. 

"It's just a tree," Diana said, equally as quietly. She thought that people would be surprised how she and Faye were when they were alone together. The show the dark-haired girl made of their rivalry faded, and while the tenseness still shimmered between them, they were able to be understanding towards each other too. "If you're that worried about the corruption of our traditions, you could always plan something for us." 

"I have," Faye said. Diana made a sound that in anyone else would be called a snort, but in her was clearly just righteous disapproval. Well, so Faye was thinking, her mind almost transparent to her. "I have. I knew that Cassie and your boyfriend would...oops! He's not your boyfriend anymore, is he?" 

"He isn't," Diana agreed, and felt relief at how dull the pain was. She could feel, more than see, Faye's eyebrows rise from the corner of her eye, her head tilted in consideration. "And I'm happy for them." 

"The fact that you're not lying makes me a little sick," Faye said. Diana smiled and shook her head. 

"I've had time to think about it. It's...right. I didn't want it to be, Faye, you know that. But it was meant to happen no matter what I wanted, and I couldn't bear to cause either of them any more pain." 

Faye sighed, both in disappointment and, in her own strange way, understanding. She stayed silent until they were almost into the middle of Salem, then sucked in her breath in horror as Diana pulled into park. 

"No," she said firmly, grabbing tightly onto Diana's arm. "Absolutely not." 

"You can stay in the car," Diana said, and in an expression she only ever felt the desire to pull on Faye, she smirked at her cousin in an echo of Faye's own trademark. 

"I hate you," Faye said, wonderingly. "Really. Diana. Target?" 

"Target," Diana said, turning off the engine and reaching into the backseat for the coat she had stashed there earlier. "Christmas." 

Faye made a wordless sound of disgust, but she followed Diana into the crowded store anyway, and added more than her fair share to the cart Diana carefully pushed around the holiday section. 

She didn't pay for any of it, of course, but Diana had never expected her to. 

*** 

Cassie suggested the Goddess ritual, a saying of goodbye to the Crone of the old year, and a welcoming of the Maiden. It was one they had performed before, but it had more meaning to Cassie this year. Diana knew that she missed her grandmother with an almost physical pain, one Diana wished she could take from her as she wrapped her arms around the younger girl and stroked her back. 

They had decided to have the ceremony in Cassie's own house, which required the help of Nick. 

"I don't even get to do this one," he observed, carrying the tree the old-fashioned way. As fun as it was to carry something by wind, she wanted the tree to stay as beautiful and full as it had been when they had cut it down, whispering thanks into the trunk. Laurel had told her to lay a crystal into the base of the tree, as gratitude for the life, and the spirit, of the tree they had cut down. She'd been lucky that she'd had a spare, after the untimely demise of tree the first. 

"I know," Diana said, not feeling at all guilty. It had always been true that while a full coven was best for almost all workings, there were ceremonies that could only be performed by the men, or by the women, alone. This one was for the women, and Diana was looking forward to it. It was their first since their candle ceremony, and she hoped that this time the unity it helped create would last. 

"You're decorating," Nick warned her, grunting and ducking to avoid the low ceilings that were endemic in the old houses of Crowhaven Road. Cassie's more than anyone's needed a renovation, but Cassie's mother didn't have the money or the will, and Diana knew that Cassie would never accept the money from her. She suspected that someday Faye and Susan, the wealthiest of them all, would bully her into it, and hoped it was before the roof fell down over their heads. 

"I know," Diana repeated. She had the decorations already stored in the kitchen, stacked neatly by the hearth that had so faithfully protected the greatest of secrets. She patted it softly, thanking it with a push of her mind. The bricks said nothing, but she felt a steadying, a strength from them, and smiled. 

Together they wrestled the tree into position, and together they swore a little as it tried its best to fall straight back down again. It turned out, after more than a few scratches, that there was something called a tree stand that would have saved them a great deal of effort and just a little less blood. 

They worked mostly in silence, Nick helping her position the shiny baubles despite his earlier protests. He had a surprising eye for it. She remembered, suddenly and with a great deal of surprise, that she hadn't always been the only artist in the Club. Nick had once loved to draw, and to sculpt, making towering structures out of everything from lego to popsicle sticks, to detritus they found down at the beach. 

Then puberty hit, and the sculptures went from innocent to profane. After a while they had stopped entirely. She remembered young Diana pondering why, and, to her shame, forgetting entirely. She hated herself a little for it; how had she let that go? 

"What are you doing?" Adam asked from the door, a little angry, a little confused. Diana, who had once felt his presence as easily as she did the movement of her own body, jumped and exhaled audibly. Adam, she thought noticed and looked a little sad. Diana wanted to feel angry, did feel angry, at his sadness, but knew she had no right. It hadn't been his fault. 

"It was meant to be a surprise," Diana said, shrugging self-consciously. She so rarely felt that way, and it didn't sit well with her. 

"It will be a surprise," Nick said coolly. "For Cassie." 

"Hey, you can't," Adam started, his voice accelerating from angry to dangerous in a second. Diana stepped between them instinctively. She only barely noticed that her stance had changed from the last time she had done this. Then, she had, as always, sought to comfort Adam and diffuse Nick. Now it had reversed, and a small part of her brain, the part not concentrating on stopping this fight before it began, thought that it was very interesting. 

"We can," Nick said. Diana almost laid her hand on his chest as she would have with Adam, settling instead for his shoulder. 

"It's for the ritual," Diana said softly. "We're holding it here, and it's traditional to have a tree." 

Adam eyed the uncharacteristic decorations warily. 

"That part's the surprise," Diana smiled, and shrugged. "Now are you going to help, or glare?" 

Adam glared, opening his mouth to say something. His breath came out all at once, half sigh, half growl. He didn't help, but as far as she knew, after he left, he didn't tell Cassie either, so she took that as a win. 

*** 

Cassie came to the ritual with shining eyes and trembling lips. The sight of the tree made her glow, made the white shift and the Master Tools shine with her, power flowing from her like the gentle waves down at their beach. She hugged Diana fiercely, far more beautiful in the regalia than Diana had ever been. 

Faye, of course, wore black, the reproductions standing proudly out from her honeyed skin. 

Diana wore none of them. No symbols of power, no ritual clothing. She still didn't know where she would fit here; where she could fit in the leadership of the coven now at all. It was only through Cassie's fierce will that she had a place at all. She wouldn't be surprised if, a couple of brief years down the track, she would be demoted entirely, the two true leaders fighting among themselves for the scraps of power. 

"It's beautiful," Cassie said, and Diana smiled back at her, biting back a sigh. She'd never felt this tired before a ritual, so drained of power before she'd had a chance to use it. 

"You're welcome," she said instead, and took her place in the coven, standing behind Cassie. 

*** 

"I thought you were busy tonight," Nick said, looking up in surprise from his work on the car. Diana had been surprised herself. She'd thought that the boys would be holding their own gathering, but there was still a distance there between them. She supposed it was her job to try and close it, to bring them all back together again. 

But still. That tiredness. 

"All done," Diana said, and she didn't bother to fake energy. Nick looked at her carefully before nodding. Diana didn't know what he'd decided and felt wrong-footed by it. She was used to being around people she could read, people who were open to her without realising they were. It was comforting in a way, and disturbing in a much larger one. 

"Want to come in?" He offered, wiping his hands down on a rag he had tucked into the waist band of his black jeans. Diana hesitated, shaking her head. Nick almost smiled, his face just a fraction softer. "Deb's out." 

"Can we bake cookies?" She asked. Nick looked as horrified as Faye on their trip to Target before Diana laughed. 

"No damn way," Nick said, tossing the rag to the ground. Diana winced a little, and Nick huffed. Diana scooted past him towards the front door and felt a small thrill when she saw him pick the rag up and actually fold it when he thought she couldn't see him. 

They end up watching an action movie that Diana couldn't name, then some cartoon series that was somehow more violent than the movie had been. In between action scenes Nick actually talks to her. It isn't much, or deep, but there are little bits on insight into him that Diana never thought to receive. A comment on cinematography that shows a deeper insight into the filmmaking process than Diana realised he possessed. A brief exchange about character development, and how he thought it was shown differently in animation than it was possible to show in live action. 

By the end of the last movie they watch, they're both drowsy, which Diana thinks removes both of their filters a little. They don't talk about Adam or Cassie, of course, but they do talk about the time before, before either of them even knew what romance was. Of their early memories of magic, and how inept they'd been in controlling them. 

"None of us ever celebrated Thanksgiving after that," Diana remembered, tired but laughing. "Not until this year. Grandma Quincy spent all day cooking that turkey and you just...froze it." 

"It wasn't my fault," Nick drawled, sprawled over the large couch, his limps dangling off the edge. Diana was curled over the other side of the sectional, their heads tucked near each other so they can talk softly. "I thought Faye was going to set it on fire. I was just trying to help." 

"That happened after," Diana refuted, waving her finger at him. "Faye was trying to _help_. And I'm convinced that's why she never did again." 

The turkey had, of course, been inedible, half frozen, half burnt. The tablecloth had been a lost cause, and the table bore scorch marks to this day. Grandma Quincy had minor frostbite that had thankfully been treatable at home, and Nick... 

"You laughed," Diana finished vaguely. "You just laughed." 

He did it again, the child's giggle and the man's deeper one mixing in Diana's mind until they become almost interchangeable. She laughed along with him, breathy and uneven, her eyes closing in amusement. He tugged on her hair a little, and she stuck her tongue out at him without looking. The tug turned into a soft rub, and neither of them moved, falling asleep together while the movie played in the background. 

*** 

They did presents, because of course they did. They were witches, they weren't stupid. If there was at all an occasion to give, and receive, wantonly, of course it had to be taken advantage of. There are more than a few gag gifts, primarily from the Hendersons of course, but in between there were genuine moments of thoughtfulness that Diana hadn't thought to expect. 

Because they were witches, of course, they did it on the night of the Winter Solstice, down at the beach, warmed by firelight and one of Laurel's brews. 

She'd done her best to get everyone as much as she could, gifts she'd put real thought into, and she thought it went down well. By far the best received were the ones Cassie gave to the Hendersons, she thought. Diana had no idea how the younger girl had done it, but inside two of the smaller gift boxes were two pristine pipe bombs, painted in fresh winter colours. 

They would, both of them assured Cassie faithfully, only use them for the purest and highest purpose. 

Nick, sitting next to Diana, almost as warm as the fire, snorted. Diana ducked her head and huffed out a laugh. 

"The highest purpose will be the next time they're gonna fail a test," Nick leaned down to whisper to her, his hair tickling her forehead. Across the fire she could feel Adam's frown, but his arm was around Cassie, and his smile was for Cassie, so he didn't get to say a thing to either of them. 

"I have faith in them," Diana said primly, tilting her head so her hair fell in front of her face and obscured her twinkling eyes. "I absolutely believe that they'll use them to uphold a long-held tradition." 

"What's that?" Nick asked, hiding behind her hair too. It was convenient, Diana realised, that he was just that bit shorter than Adam. It meant that they were closer together, were able to hide together without it being too obvious. 

"Killing the new principal," Diana said, a little shocked at herself. She never made jokes like that. She never really made jokes at all, and it felt...nice saying something a little different, a little naughty. Nick laughed in shock, his eyes wide and sparkling. 

He turned away from her, leaning away from her curtain of hair, his customary smirk on his lips. Across the fire Faye was arguing with Laurel about the benefits of adding vodka to the tea, and with Deborah cheering her on loudly. Chris and Doug were debating the benefits of pipe bombs versus targeted fire crackers and beside her Nick shifted just a little closer. 

Behind their backs he reached for her hand, tangling their pinkie fingers together where no one could see. Diana saw Adam lean over and kiss Cassie softly, but for once she barely noticed. She was too busy concentrating on the sparks in her fingertips. She didn't dare look at them, but she thought there might be real lightning between there. 

Nick looked as surprised as she felt, and she closed her eyes as a breeze blew past them. Past, but not between, because there was no room and that didn't feel as wrong as she thought it would. It didn't feel wrong at all. 

"Come over tomorrow," She suggested through a lump in her throat. "I was going to bake cookies." 

"No damn way," Nick said but it was soft, and a little wondering. Like he was seeing her differently, and he didn't know how it had happened. "No cookies." 

"Just to the cookies?" she asked, the hand not next to his clenching a handful of sand tightly. 

"I'll eat them," he qualified. "I won't bake them." 

"Deal," Diana whispered, too bewildered to smile, and too happy to want to hide it. "But I expect compliments." 

"I can do that," Nick said, a man who'd complimented maybe two people in his life, and Diana had never been one of them. His voice shook just a little, in a way that could be confused with cold if Diana hadn't been able to feel how warm he was. "As many as...I mean...Yeah. I can do that." 

"I know you can," she agreed, looking forward to tomorrow, really looking forward to it, for the first time in months. The future was a mess of possibilities, and she thought that maybe that was okay. It might just be good that she had nothing fated for her, and the ability to still, to always, be surprised. 

"You're the surprise," Nick whispered. 

"Oi, what are you both talking about over there?" Chris yelled, accusing. 

Nick tossed his head back and laughed, throwing back a stinging bit of sarcasm that had Chris spluttering. He deflected like a pro, bordering on cruel but never crossing that line. The argument continued, on and off, until everyone was exhausted, and at least three of them were a tiny bit drunker than Laurel had given permission for. 

Behind them he didn't let go of her hand, staying connected until long after the fire went out.


End file.
